John
Buchan was my companion on that walk, and together we stood staring
over the edge of a trench to where, grim and gaunt against the gray
sky, loomed the high, steel columns of the "Tower Bridge," the mining-
works which I had seen before the battle as an inaccessible landmark
in the German lines. Now they were within our lines in the center of
Loos, and no longer "leering" at us, as an officer once told me they
used to do when he led his men into communication trenches under their
observation.
Behind us now was the turmoil of war--thousands and scores of
thousands of men moving in steady columns forward and backward in the
queer, tangled way which during a great battle seems to have no
purpose or meaning, except to the directing brains on the Headquarters
Staff, and, sometimes in history, none to them.
Vast convoys of transports choked the roads, with teams of mules
harnessed to wagons and gun-limbers, with trains of motor ambulances
packed with wounded men, with infantry brigades plodding through the
slush and slime, with divisional cavalry halted in the villages, and
great bivouacs in the boggy fields.
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